


i can't believe, i've been touched by an angel

by sugarplumfairy



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Praise Kink, Vaginal Fingering, WoL has a vagina but no pronouns are specified have fun, guided masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 21:28:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30145854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarplumfairy/pseuds/sugarplumfairy
Summary: Ardbert and the WoL have been dancing around the edge of this. Whatever THIS is.Intimacy with an aether shade is complicated. They make it work.
Relationships: Ardbert (Final Fantasy XIV)/Reader, Ardbert/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV - Ardbert x WoL Recommendations





	i can't believe, i've been touched by an angel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naznahl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naznahl/gifts).



> Written in tandem with naznahl! <3 We had the same Ardbert brainworm so we turned it into a little workshop project with the same prompt (: 
> 
> And if you know what song the title's from no you don't <3

“Does it get… lonely?” you ask.

He laughs. Disbelievingly at first, then uproariously. 

“Lonely?” he repeats. His voice is a little rumbly, nice and low and very pleasant to your ear. You didn’t have much of a chance to hear it, the last time the two of you crossed paths. “Lonely. I spun you the tale of how I wandered this barren waste for a  _ hundred _ years, and you asked me in turn if it’s  _ lonely. _ ”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--”

Ardbert looks at you, and your words fail in the face of the deep sorrow in his eyes. You’d seen it before in him. And it had been enough to make you pause then, pause even as he had continued the arc of his axe with no similar intention of mercy.

You stare at each other for a while longer in the silence. The orchestrion on your table plays its gentle tune, too peaceful and too cheery for the tense moment.

“It  _ is _ lonely,” he says. You watch him swallow hard, watch the muscles of his throat work against whatever inhibits him. “It was unbearably lonely. I near lost my mind.”

“Was?” you ask. You don’t quite understand why your heart’s suddenly beating faster. 

His lips, turned into a frown every time you’ve seen him, even during these recent visits in your loft, twitch up into what could almost be a smile. It’s a tentative one, as if he’s afraid of the consequences of it. 

He motions towards you with a gloved hand.

“I thought you knew,” he says. “That you were the quiet dark in this unbearably bright existence.”

The way he says it makes it sound like a love confession. You think you’re willing to let yourself believe that it  _ is _ one. 

You don’t realize that he’s waiting for a reply until his face falls, ever so slightly, and you scramble to find words. 

“I--” you start, and have to start over. “You never told me as much. In as many words.”

He seems to find a little relief in that, scratches at his hairline in an awkward gesture. You wonder if he feels it when he does that. If his hands find purchase on himself, at least.

“I suppose I haven’t been one for words since we’d met, have I?” He gives you that cautious smile again, and you think you could grow used to seeing it on him. 

“Unfortunately not,” you say. “Which is a pity. You have a quite enjoyable voice.”

He watches you for a moment, and his face gradually falls into an expression that you can’t rightly name. It’s curiosity, and surprise, and… dare you call it wonder? His gloved fingers flex at his side. 

What must it be like, to have felt nothing for a hundred years? Not warmth, not cold, not even the solid metal of a door handle. 

Ardbert catches the direction of your stare and holds his hand up for you to see. It’s translucent, like the rest of him - faintly glowing with a halo of primordial Light. 

“You know, for so long, I don’t think I was even as tangible as this. I was so numb to it all, so lost and invisible that I became formless for a while.” He clenches his hand into a fist, and relaxes it again. “But it was  _ you. _ You…  _ perceiving _ me, that gave me purpose again. That gave me something to hold to.”

“Ardbert--” 

“Wait, let me finish, please.” He takes a step closer to you, and another until you’re within arm’s reach. “When you’re here, like this, I feel so real. I feel almost as if I could…”

He reaches his hand out slowly, giving you the chance to shy away, but you lean closer. Your heart hammers as his hand curves to mimic the shape of your cheek, hoping, praying with him that it will--

Where there should have been a warm hand there’s nothing. You don’t even feel cold as he passes through you, like Alphinaud’s ghost stories might have convinced you.

Disappointment settles in your chest but you look up at Ardbert and his face is absolutely crestfallen. You take a step forward to further close the gap and your instinct is to try and touch him back. Your hand stops just shy of his face as you remember yourself.

“As if you could what?” you ask, gently. “What would you do, if you could touch me?”

His eyes scan your face, flick back and forth as if committing your features to memory. You’ve never seen him this close, either, and you gaze back openly. 

You remember his eyes being a deep blue, though suffused now with light they’re more akin to a crystal. His skin glows, washing out the finer contours of his face, though you can still appreciate the strong slope of his nose and the short scruff of his fledgling beard. 

His hand rises to meet you again, though this time he keeps it just above your cheek. His arm trembles - from emotion or effort, you can’t tell. 

“I would touch you like this,” he says. “Feel the warmth of you in my hand.”

His eyes go a little glassy, and you can sense that he’s trying to imagine it. Staring at you under his hand and just trying by sheer force of will to close the cognitive distance. 

“And then?” you ask. You’re almost afraid to. What is this thing that the two of you dance around? And how far could it even go, in a situation such as this?

He seems to think the same, closes his eyes with his brow furrowed. He lets out a breath through his lips that you can’t feel, even as close to him as you are.

“What does it matter, what I would do?” he asks. “What are we doing?”

You’re not even sure why, but you feel your throat close up with a threat of tears. The pain in his voice is clear, so clear that it cuts you by sheer proximity. He opens his eyes but can’t look at you.

You  _ do _ forget yourself, then, and reach up for his chin but your hand passes through and it stings your heart a little. He turns his head towards you anyway, willingly, and that smile that had enchanted you has faded. 

“I’m just a shade,” he says, exasperated. “I can’t- I can’t touch you, I can’t  _ reciprocate _ in the way that you deserve. All I have are words, and words are scarce as a comfort.”

“I’m alright with just your words,” you say. It’s not too brazen a lie. While you feel the acute yearning for a touch that you can never have, his words are a far greater comfort than he seems to think. “Let me be your hands. Tell me, Ardbert, what would you do if you could touch me?”

He studies you for another agonizing moment before his hand resumes its place just above your cheek. 

“If I could touch you,” he says, and you can almost hear the gentle release of one of his self-made shackles. “I would pull you close. I would… I would kiss you, tenderly, if you would allow me."

"I would," you say, immediately, mindlessly. You strain towards him, though you don't know why when he can't make good on his word. 

He laughs shallowly, not an entirely happy sound. He leans closer, but hovers still about an ilm away from your face, eyes fixed on your lips. It breaks you, to know that this is the closest you will get. That to ask for any more would beggar disappointment.

“What else?” you ask, almost desperate, wanting to change the subject before he changes his mind. “What else?” 

His lips part, you watch his tongue dart across them and you wonder if he’s thinking about how you would taste. You wonder if he remembers what another person tastes like. 

“I would-” his other hand hovers over your hip, again with the tremble of his restraint. “I would want to touch you, here. I would wait for you to let me. And then…”

When did your eyes close to imagine it better? When did you start to feel the phantom of what his warm touch might feel like, to play out his words as a fantasy in your head?

“And then, Ardbert please, and then-?”

He makes a low noise in his throat like a groan of frustration, though to your eager ears it could almost be a sound of arousal. 

With your eyes closed you have no idea when he leaned in so close to you, so you’re startled when he speaks directly into your ear.

“And then, I would do things that you can’t do with your clothes on, sweetheart.”

You gasp in shock, both at the proximity of him and the words that he’d said, and when you open your eyes he’s already backing away. 

“Sorry, was that too-” he starts to say, but you don’t let him finish. 

“No, no, please,” you say, and before you realize it you’ve taken a step forward to follow him. “It wasn’t- I want to… How can we do this?”

The look on his face melts back into one of gentle awe and quiet disbelief. The two of you stand there, silent again, hands back in their proper places. 

The orchestrion chimes merrily in the background.

“Can we change the music?” he asks. “It’s not quite getting me in the mood.”

You have to laugh as you step around him, even though you don’t have to, to change the song.  _ In the mood. _ It’s ridiculous, what the two of you are intent on doing, but all the same your heart flutters at the thought of it.

You scroll through the various rolls you’ve obtained in your travels. The song that plays in the Seventh Heaven, the dusty scroll you’d found in the Great Gubal Library… none of them seem quite fit for the occasion. 

“What sort of mood are we going for?” you ask, because you need to know that he’s of the same mind as you. “Have you given it any thought?”

“Well, you said you’d be my hands,” he says. You try a scroll that you immediately decide you don’t like and keep flipping through. “And there are many more places I'd like to touch you."

You shiver, really shiver, and try to browse the titles faster because you want to keep going and-

"How about silence?" Ardbert asks. His voice is rough, strained, as impatient as you feel.

You just about yank the roll out of the machine, nodding. "Yes, silence."

It only takes a moment for you to turn off the machine, but in that moment you hear the faint sound of his breath.

You  _ hear _ his  _ breath.  _

You turn to him and, yes, his chest is heaving, and he’s looking at you with those bright eyes and his lips slightly parted. And you hear it. You hear the gentle rush of air as his chest expands, and again as it passes through. 

“What is it?” he asks. You struggle to put it into words.

“Ardbert,” you say. You step closer to him and the bed, away from the orchestrion. As always you see the rest of your room behind him as if through frosted glass. But he’s  _ real. _ The flicker of his eyes over your face, the way his weightless weight shifts with his feet firm on the floorboards. 

To you, he’s real. Despite his contrary opinions on the matter.

But you can’t figure out a way to tell him all this without killing the mood, so instead you walk past him to perch yourself on the edge of the bed.

“We were in the middle of something,” you say. “You were about to tell me where, exactly, you’d like to touch me.”

The moment passes and the heat ticks back up as Ardbert follows you with careful, deliberate steps.

“I  _ believe _ I said I would do things that require your clothes to be  _ off. _ ” 

“Sweetheart,” you say.

He’s so close now, so close that you should be able to feel the heat from his body where he stands between your legs. “What was that?”

“You called me ‘sweetheart,’” you clarify, your neck craned up to look at him against the halo of your ceiling light. “Earlier.”

“Ah.” He leans down, hands coming down to land on either side of you. “Did you like that-- Oof.”

His hands find no purchase and he disappears face-first through the mattress and even though it’s mean, even though you know you shouldn’t, you have to laugh. And then his head reappears right between your thighs and he’s smiling,  _ oh, thank the Gods he’s smiling, _ and you laugh harder, laugh until your sides hurt. 

He  _ should _ remember what things hold his weight and what doesn’t, he’s been this way for a hundred years. But maybe because it’s  _ you, _ maybe because you look at him and know where his eyes are, maybe because you can track the path of his hands… he forgets. 

Maybe he believes you, for a moment, when you tell him he’s real. 

“Ha, ha,” he says, good-naturedly, as he stands with his legs still phased through the bed. He looks at you soft, so soft, his smile fond and serene.

It's because you're laughing, you realize, and that thrills you more than this absurd thing the two of you are attempting to do. Ardbert reaches for you but stops himself before his fingers can pass through the hem of your top. 

"Take this off," he says. It's not an order - it's the plea of a reverent man, and your fingers work at the closures of your shirt before he's even finished.

He watches, enraptured, as each inch of your skin is unveiled, and it’s a struggle to decide if you should be watching him or looking at what you’re doing. It’s embarrassing, almost silly how attentive he is to the act of you undressing.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen, I’m sure,” you say.

That shocks him back to some presence of mind. “What?” he asks, perplexed by the implication. “I haven’t. I haven’t seen it.”

Your hands freeze in their places at the edge of your trousers, your shirt hanging unbuttoned and open. “Really? Not accidentally?” you ask. “I mean… you can walk through walls, so I just assumed that you must have- at some point- and not said anything since you’re  _ such _ a gentleman--” 

“No, never,” he says. You know it’s true because he’s regarding you with that look again, the one that says he would never,  _ could _ never lie to you. “Accidentally, to others, sure. When the Crystarium was first built and I was exploring. I am now painfully aware of where every bedroom and washroom is in this city.”

You both laugh, and it makes it all feel natural again. You imagine him stumbling into some old couple’s bedroom at the wrong time, closing his eyes and cursing. 

He kneels down so he’s face to face with you, everything chest-down consumed by the height of the mattress. “Why would you think that?”

You don’t know why, you realize. You look down to sort through your heart, dig out the root of this unwarranted fear. 

“I think it’s what you said to me, a little while ago, about the Exarch and how he sees everything. How he probably even sees us when we talk. It…” You don’t want to say it scares you, because you’re not supposed to be afraid of anything. “It just made me wonder.”

But he knows the truth behind your words, and his face falls, plain that his heart breaks just a little. His hand reaches and hovers just above your shoulder. Then, after that moment’s hesitation, his thumb moves in soothing strokes - this is how he’d caress you, if he could. 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says. This time it’s with none of the sarcasm, none of the coyness that he’d first said it with. It’s gentle, the way one might say it to their lover. “Never, never.”

“I should have known,” you say, because you should have. “I just feel. Watched, sometimes.”

Ardbert kneels down further until he occupies the spot that your gaze is fixed on. It’s silly, all of it, the fact that he can’t even sit on the bed with you and the fact that you can only watch him pretend to put his arms around your waist. 

“It’s never my eyes. It will never be my eyes,” he says. You want so badly to lean down and press your nose into the nest of his hair. He has the same thought. “I wish now more than ever that I could touch you, so I could hold you like this until the doubt disappears.”

Your chest feels tight, and godsdamnit, this was supposed to be fun. This was supposed to help you feel good and help him feel real, so you punch down your regret and shrug your shirt off your shoulders.

He parts from you, rising up again onto his knees, then slowly standing as you lean back to unbuckle your trousers. 

“What now, Ardbert?” you ask. “Tell me what to do now.”

His teeth graze his lower lip, an inadequate container for his groan of arousal. “Take it all off. Lie back and take it all off,” he says. “And then let me look at you.”

You are happy to comply, lifting your hips to take off your trousers, and your smalls with them. You toss them aside along with your shirt, and you follow your instinct when it tells you the next step is to spread your legs. 

It’s cold. Your body expects the warmth of another on top of you, but with Ardbert’s lack of substance you just feel exposed. You heat up quickly, though, with the weight of his eyes on you. 

“Gods, I would…” He leans down and ghosts his hand over your body, his fingers pressing around your raised nipple. 

You mimic him, squeeze your nipple between your thumb and forefinger, roll when he rolls his own fingers and draw a moan from yourself. “Like this?”

“Yes, exactly.”

You pinch when he pinches, pull when he does, and soon your breath is coming short, back arching into your own touch, into  _ his _ touch by proxy. The itch between your legs is becoming unbearable. 

“Ardbert… Ardbert, please,” you say. You want so badly to move your hand lower, to give yourself some relief, but you can’t move unless he tells you to. Your hands are his hands tonight.

He brushes the fingers of his free hand down your stomach, and you follow him while your fix your eyes on his, to make it easier to pretend that your own battle-worn callouses are his. Your core throbs at the approach of your hand, your heart flutters as you’re poised to sink your fingers down where you need them, and then--

“Close your eyes,” Ardbert says. He’s stopped, infuriatingly close to where you’re dripping with want. 

“What-” you start, confused and desperate. “Why-?”

The way he regards you, the way he tilts his head and looks at you through his long, dark eyelashes, holds that deep sorrow again. 

“I don’t-” he starts to say, but he changes his mind and starts again. “It’ll be easier for you to pretend this way, if you don’t look at me like this. You can imagine me as more… real.”

You’re shaking your head already, before the words even come out. “No,” you say, firmly, “No. What are you talking about?”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, and with that simple expression you’re suddenly hit with the memory of him doing the exact same gesture when he was warm and made of flesh and blood. 

He holds his hand up to the light to show you how it filters through, undampened. “This! How can you look at me like this, and pretend that I’m real? It would be better for you to start from scratch.”

“But you  _ are _ real,” you say, and you fumble to try and convince him of it. “I don’t care that I can see through you, this is how you look. And that’s real.”

He just looks at you, with his little dumbfounded look, so you keep going.

“And we have to make it work, but eh. Everything takes work. This is the way it is. This is how you are. And if you don’t  _ do something _ soon I’m going to absolutely lose it.”

“Alright, alright,” he says, and moves his hand back down, out of your sight. “Touch yourself for me.”

You readily comply, your breath catching both at the pressure of your fingers and the realization of how wet you are. You slide your hand up and down, and in the silence of the room the slick sound it makes is obscene. How is he touching you? Where are his fingers?

“I can’t see, Ardbert,” you say, watching his face still as his own eyes are fixed on where his hand meets the space between your legs. “Tell me what to do.”

He leans closer to you, though he remembers not to put his weight on the bed this time. You hear his breath - you  _ should _ feel it, with his face mere ilms away, but you don’t. And you find yourself unsurprised by it, finally. 

“Spread yourself open with your fingers so I can see how wet you are,” he says.

You do so, spreading your legs further for his view as you press two fingers into your folds and pry them apart. You feel a warm trickle down your inner thigh, and above you Ardbert groans. 

“Gods, what I’d give to touch you, really touch you,” he says. “Push one of your fingers inside, nice and slow.”

His arm moves as if he’s doing the same, and as you press your finger against your entrance it’s easy to forget your own limbs and pretend that the pressure, the breach, the slight stretch is that of  _ his _ digit. You gasp as it forges in deeper - it’s barely anything, you know, but everything up to this point has made you so sensitive, so desperate.

“Ardbert,” you moan. “Please, I need more. Give me more.”

He smiles down at you, and it’s  _ radiant. _ Indeed, what was he thinking? How could you have done this without seeing him - without the enchanting glow that is as much a part of him now as his his hands, his lips, his deep ocean eyes?

“Pull it out, add another.” His gaze flicks back down to your cunt, and you keen as you feel the pleasant burn of two fingers, as you imagine how he’s watching his own fingers disappear into you alongside your own.

You push in as deep as you can go at this angle, and pull out even without his permission.

“Yes, that’s good, sweetheart. Fuck yourself nice and deep. Keep it slow.” 

Even if he’s not looking back at you, you can’t take your eyes off of his face. His mouth is slightly parted, and his expression is one of such deep concentration that you wonder what he’s thinking about. Is he remembering what it feels like, the warmth and wetness and vice on his own fingers?

It’s good - the drag, the burn, but it doesn’t soothe the ache. 

“Please,” you beg, and his eyes snap back to yours the moment you speak. “Please touch my clit. Please.”

His free hand almost touches your face, but he pulls it back in before it does. “Yes, alright, alright. Take those two fingers and rub your clit back and forth. They should be nice and wet.”

Your cunt mourns the loss of your fingers, but it’s soon forgotten when you press them to your throbbing clit instead and, as bidden, drag them back and forth across it. Your body jolts in pleasure, legs siezing up for a moment before you forcibly relax them. 

“Good. No circles yet. I’ll tell you when. Just back and forth, so you feel every motion.” 

You look down your nose to try and see his hands - they’re not trying to touch you anymore, instead palming at the front of his trousers. 

“A-Ardbert,” you say. “What about you?”

“What about me?” he asks. 

“We don’t have to keep pretending. Tell me what to do for you and let yourself feel good too.”

He searches your face and must see no room for argument there, because he simply undoes the front of his pants and pulls out his hard cock instead of fighting you. He slides his hand from base to tip and hides a moan behind a bit lip.

“Wh-  _ ha- _ why are  _ you _ trying to be quiet, silly?” you say. “I’m the only one who can hear you.”

He laughs breathily but it becomes an open moan when he strokes himself again. “Well, what if you don’t want to hear me?”

What a silly man. You think this as you watch him watch you, as he strokes himself slightly faster and another moan tumbles from his mouth. 

“And what if I do?”

He scoffs and smiles shyly. “If I wasn’t dead already, you’d kill me with comments like that. Rub yourself in circles now, as fast as you’d like.”

“Yes, finally-” Your back arches off the bed when you finally give yourself the stimulation you’ve been craving, fast and tight circles on your clit. You’re so wet that the sound of your own touch is less like damp skin and more like splashing in a shallow puddle.

You could come like this, Gods, you could come like this. But Ardbert’s only just gotten started and although you’ve finally gotten to touch yourself the way you wanted to, you realize with an acute sting in your chest that you don’t want to finish yet. Not without him.

You remove your fingers from yourself, as much as your body whines in disappointment. 

“Is s-something wrong?” he asks, in between his own groans of pleasure. He slows a bit, but doesn’t stop his own stroking. 

“I don’t want to end it yet,” you say. “Not without you. Give me another order.”

“Darkness take me,” he swears, his head dipping for a moment before he fixes his eyes back on you. “Turn over, on all fours.”

You nod, and reposition yourself on shaky legs. You realize that you can’t see him like this.

Almost as if he senses your thoughts, you hear him closer to your ear as he continues, “Don’t worry. I’m right here.”

You press your forehead down into the sheets. “What now? What next?”

His breath comes harsh into your ear, and recognize the sound of his hand on himself in the absence of your own. The thought makes you squeeze your thighs together for some relief. 

“Two fingers in your pussy. Any two, take your pick,” he says.

You reach back, having to press your shoulder into the mattress to make the angle work. Your entrance, neglected for a little while but dripping with your pleasure, accepts the intrusion easily. You press your face into the sheets to muffle your moan as you thrust in deep with your fingers.

“I’m still here, sweetheart,” Ardbert says, his voice moving further from your ear, “but I want to watch this.”

You nod, and thrust your fingers in and out of yourself, spreading your legs wider on your own accords. Once again the friction is good but not enough. You roll your hips back, trying to get more. 

“One more finger. Give yourself one more,” he says, from behind you. 

You pull your two fingers out and prod the three against your entrance and just your fingertips alone make little headway. You slip just the two back in, trying to loosen yourself up. 

“I can’t,” you say. “I can’t, it won’t fit.”

“Yes, you can,” he says. “I know you can. Just relax and take it slowly.”

You try, you really try, but you feel like a bowstring pulled tight and every barest touch makes you lock up and tremble. You push those three fingers against yourself, twisting slowly to try and force them in.

“I know how strong you are,” Ardbert continues. “I-  _ Gods- _ I’ve watched you slay beasts and godsdamned  _ Lightwardens _ and walk away unscathed, strong enough to hide the wounds in your soul so they don’t hurt anyone else. I know your strength, sweetheart, and I know you can take it.”

His praise melts you, melts you enough that your fingers slip in a little deeper - an ilm, and then a few more, until they’re all the way in and you almost sob into the sheets. “Gods, Ardbert-”

“Yes, now fuck yourself nice and deep,” he says, and his breath is coming short. “I’m nearly there, I’m nearly there.”

“Take me with you, take me with you,” you babble mindlessly as you roll your hips back to meet your own fingers, the occasional drip down your inner thigh now a steady trickle. 

“Tell me what you need,” he says. You hear him increase his pace, so close to his end.

“Clit--”

“Yes, take your other hand and rub your clit, you’ve been so good, so good, come with me-- ah!”

You have to press your face into the sheets to scream as you clench around your fingers, as your thighs clench on reflex around your hands, and in the distance you’re faintly aware of Ardbert’s own moans as he finishes with you. 

You stay there as the sweat cools on your back and the moisture between your legs becomes tacky on your fingers. You roll over to your side to see Ardbert there, kneeling on the floor and blissed out. He looks strangely clean for someone who’d just stroked himself to completion.

“There’s no… you didn’t…?” you ask, unsure how to phrase your question in the least awkward way possible. 

He takes a moment to understand what you’re asking, but he bursts out in laughter when he does. 

“Please don’t ask me how I came to find out,” he says, “but no, it’s been dry ever since I found myself in this state.”

You laugh alongside him, exhausted. You pull a pillow under your head.

“You should sleep. I’ll give you some space,” he says. He tucks his spent cock back into his pants and starts to get up.

“No!” you say, before you even realize what you’re doing. “Don’t… don’t go.”

He stops with his one knee still on the ground. “I can’t join you there, we both saw that embarrassment earlier.”

You sit up and tuck the pillow under your arm, and gather up the top blanket before sliding off the bed. “Then I’ll join you down there.” 

He looks aghast at the suggestion even as you sit down next to him and arrange the blanket over yourself, as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility that you’d put yourself out just to keep him there.

You lie down on the pillow facing him and pat the ground next to you invitingly. He does lie down where you bid him to, although his expression is still one of disbelief. 

In the silence you hear his breath. Lying here like this, it all doesn’t feel so absurd. You could start sleeping on one of those futons, like they have in Othard, and it wouldn’t be so weird.

Again, he seems to know your mind better that you know it yourself.

“What are we doing?” he asks. “How can we possibly make this work?”

You want to tell him about the futon, about the toys you can buy to make this easier, but instead you find yourself stuck on the root of his question.

When your work is done on the First. When you grow old and he’s trapped here in the perfection of primordial Light. When you can’t possibly explain to any of the Scions exactly what is happening. What then?

You take in a deep breath and file all those questions away in the box labeled for “Later” and instead place your hand over his, even though they phase through each other. 


End file.
